30 de junio de 2010

Back in Seattle...

Hey everyone. So the first round of English classes finished in Costa Rica about a week and a half ago, with five students having completed the basic English course. There isn't a whole lot of other news about Costa Rica. I swear at some point I will go through my photo album and try to add some pictures here. If you're connected with me on Facebook, I already posted a mountain of pictures there. (Was that Spanglish?)

Coming back has been an interesting experience. I still had some bites from the rainforest dwellers that I wanted to get checked out while I was here, and one of my friends--who was gracious enough to open her door for me--freaked out about the bites and decided she couldn't stand even a minute possibility of parasites living in her apartment. Understandable, I suppose, but now I am basically living out of my car. I've seen the inside of a couple of motels and I've stayed a few nights now with an old friend of mine from the Jobs with Justice days.

I never could stay in one place anyway.

Calls to Costa Rica and computer operating systems are still in Spanish. Everything else is in English. It's funny how quickly your second language can slip away while your mother tongue always stays fixed in your mind. My translation work for El Centro de la Raza is going at a snail's pace. I would like to just get it done but I am too busy procrastinating; I'm supposed to be studying for Saturday's English GRE test, and so of course everything in the world seems more interesting, which is probably why I finally got around to this blog post. When I actually start "studying," I guess I'll probably finish the translation. And life goes on.

I managed to pick up a day of work last week for an interesting political campaign. The legislature of Washington state, from what I understand, has approved a tax on candy and soft drinks to help save health care and education. It's worth about $300 million to the state budget, according to one source. So naturally, national and state companies put together a campaign to block this bill. I was able to work with one of several organizations trying to save the bill. I saw it as a microcosm of the daily struggle between the financial interests of large companies and governmental entities tying to balance their budgets. While I was working on the campaign, I also got to find out a little bit more about the organizing going on behind I-1098, the "Tax the Rich" campaign. It seems like a lot of people are very excited about this prospect. Filmmaker and Seattle historian Shaun Scott has remarked that similar campaigns have already happened in Washington several times before, most notably in the 1930s, 1970s and 1980s. It will be interesting to see if, in light of recent financial events, we are actually able to pull it off this time without facing some type of major catastrophe.

I wonder how much of the state budget goes to cleaning up candy wrappers and soda bottles from our sidewalks, streets and highways? One thing I have noticed since coming back here is that we produce, as part of our daily routine, a considerably greater amount of waste than they do in Colonia Libertad. Sure, we don't burn our plastic--most of it winds up in our rivers, lakes and streams and eventually finds its way to the ocean--but we do use a lot of it. That, and styrofoam, and all sorts of labels and decals and wrappers and clothing tags and bumper stickers and a whole host of other things that you just don't find in a place like Colonia Libertad. Of course, we're not comparing apples to apples here; this is a bustling metropolis, and Colonia Libertad is a community of less than 500 people. Still, if you added up enough Colonia Libertads to equal the population of a city the size of Seattle, I'm pretty sure the Colonia Libertads of the world would be producing less trash than Seattle, and that's something to think about.

Well, before I get into another discussion about how nobody really wants to be poor and a lot of people think they're poor but really aren't as poor as the people who have no resources to fall back on even when they're cash poor, I think I'll leave it there and go find some coffee somewhere. And yes, I will BEG the barista to not put a plastic lid on my cup.

From Seattle,

Chaim Eliyah

8 de junio de 2010

You guessed it! Rice and beans!

Hey everyone. It's been a long month, sorry for not writing. Some time at the end of May I got kicked out of la casa de los maestros. It's kind of a long story. I was initially told that someone in Aguas Claras had complained to the Ministry of Education, and for that reason I couldn't give classes anymore and had to move. Then my former roommate told me that surely I was looking for someone to blame and she hoped I wouldn't blame her. Then, last week, I found out that nobody at the high schools in Colonia Blanca or Aguas Claras knew anything about a complaint at the level of the Ministry of Education. I'm chalking it up to a married mother's desire to not have a male roommate and the general desire in this part of the world to avoid direct confrontation.

So, after pounding the gravel (there's no pavement) a little, I have managed to organize new English classes with the support of the Development Association, which is more or less the governing body of Colonia Libertad. I am staying in the guest room of the house of two benevolent and wonderful people, Changuelo and Magdalena. Changuelo is a subsistence farmer who worked for years at the nearby ranch but is now retired. Magdalena is a housewife and the mother of nine children, some of whom still live here in the community. There are less mosquitoes (zancudos) here than there were by la casa de los maestros, but every once in a while those and other bugs still come around to nibble. I pay less attention to their nibbling now, although I am still having minor allergic reactions so some of the bites. I have a plug from Raid that has little exchangeable tabs that are "lightly toxic" and have the pleasant effect of killing all the mosquitoes in the room. I also have a fan, which seems to scare them off for some reason. I don't think I'll be dying of hemorrhagic dengue, but if I do, I'll be sure to blog it.

I am now giving free intensive English classes to the community for three hours a day each day. Between lesson plans and correcting homework, this takes a good chunk out of the day, but I am still finding time to play guitar and argue with film producers and Environmental Justice professors. If there's anything that can change a state-eschewing Marxist's mind about the world, it's coming to live in a backwoods, roughneck Christian community in the middle of Central America. I've learned to accept my nationality with stride, to identify with the materialist desires of the youth here (to do otherwise would make me a total hypocrite), and to be thankful for whatever guiding force is driving my interactions with the community. My attitude about Christianity is still the same: The bible sucks, but Jesus was pretty cool. But my appreciation for the love of human beings acting within the context of a community has grown immensely. The only thing that kind of bothers me is the way people treat their pets here. But you know what they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Rice and beans form the centerpiece of any meal here. You can expect a couple of plantains (they may not be ripe) and rice and beans no matter what the other ingredients are. As much as I love rice and beans, I have to admit that every once in a while I crave a big ol' pizza or some fettuccine alfredo. The really interesting thing is that even though we live in the middle of a farming community, food is often brought in from well outside the community. At the house where I live, ants are a big problem and have been eating the crops; other farmers in the area are involved mostly in cattle ranching. There are relatively few farms that grow the area's staples. Changuelo just supervised the planting of a huerta escolar at the school, so soon the school will be growing their own corn and yucca. The students are expected to take part in this process, but I don't know to what extent they will.

The smell of burning plastic really bothers me. It's not just that I know that the dioxins can give us all cancer, it's that I don't understand why so much plastic is allowed into a community that can't process the resulting waste. I suppose it's like that in the whole world and that's why we've got all that plastic floating in the ocean:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090820-plastic-decomposes-oceans-seas.html

Still, I have to admit that I do use products with plastic even though I try to avoid it. I'm trying to take a proactive role in educating the community about the dangers of plastic, and recently the Asociación said they might be interested in getting a truck to haul recyclables out of the community once a week or so. More on this later.

Mostly I am grappling with the same concepts as the Asociación; how to give this community the economic resources that it wants and needs without destroying its knowledge of subsistence farming and its sense of autonomy. When I came here, my biggest concern was teaching English; now, I see languages as a tool and I think the real problems are much more complex than any one set of theories would suggest. For instance, one major threat to the community is the breakdown of families within the last generation. The conservative bloc in my mind swears that this is because liberalism has eschewed family values, and part of me knows that this is true. Our individualism and our careers have become more important to us as a people than maintaining our family relations, and this phenomenon is spreading across cultures. You can blame capitalism or you can say that the state should stay out of family affairs, or you can start a debate if you like about whether clans or families came first, but I think it is noteworthy that our sense of community has become so diluted that many of us prefer corporate responsibilities and solitary lifestyles to communal living. People here think I'm friendly, but emotionally distant, and honestly I find it a little hard to imagine living as they do, i.e. in constant contact with one another, all the time!

Speaking of which, I am going to finish this blog post off and try to post again soon. I really want to go through my recent facebook discussions and apply the arguments there to what I am learning here. At some point I also want to do an in-depth discussion of the differences between living in Ecuador, among the Shuar, and the lifestyle of the Colonia here. I will be working on those posts, but in the mean time I am going to think about what might be for dinner.

See you next time,

Chaim Eliyah

15 de mayo de 2010

Struggling students

Hey everyone! I've been out of touch for a while. I've been sick and abandoned and left for dead in the middle of the rainforest. But it's all getting better. Here's a short recap of where we are so far and a review of what needs to be done here and why.

Okay, just in case you don't have a good idea where I am, I am about 20 kilometers south of the Nicaraguan border, in a small settlement on the outposts of the Aguas Claras district in the Upala region. There is a long dirt road leading out of Aguas Claras that eventually ends just near the Nicaraguan border, and the fourth colony on that road is called Colonia Libertad. I am teaching English to students from Aguas Claras, Colonia Blanca, Valle Verde and Colonia Libertad.

I have been organizing the English lessons since I arrived here. When I arrived, there was confusion in the community about when I would be arriving and where I would be staying. At first, people thought that I was from the Peace Corps and that I was there to do infrastructure projects. It took me almost two weeks to nail down a solid place to stay, which ended up being at the exact house that I was told I would be staying in--but only thanks to a strange turn of events that replaced one teacher with another who lives close by, thus freeing up a space at la casa de los maestros (the teachers' house). After that, I tried to establish an afternoon schedule with Mayra, the schoolmaster, only to eventually find out that the majority of the students aren't at school in the afternoons. School ends after "lunch;" lunch is at 10 or 11 am, depending on the day. This means that the students have an average of 3 hours 20 minutes of actual instruction each day. My English lessons usually last about an hour, which means that the students must take that hour out of their other studies. Subjects that the students study in school are not reinforced in their homes due to a lack of general education in the community. I have established a new tentative schedule with the schoolmaster. More about this in a minute.

I have also traveled to Aguas Claras to talk with the director and the head English teacher there about the problem that the students are having with graduating from high school. Both of them agree that there is a problem, but they have been exceedingly bureaucratic about letting me teach there. The two times that I have taught there, it has been to conversational English students who don't really (in my humble opinion) need additional help. I have come to the conclusion that maybe I can solve the Aguas Claras graduation problem closer to home by holding English workshops here in Colonia Libertad.

In addition, I am now teaching two days a week at the high school in Colonia Blanca. In this case, when I say "high school" I am talking about a single-room building where students sit in different groups to learn subjects. The high school collaborates with the Ministry of the Environment and Energy so that they can have extra space in which to show videos and teach classes outside of the Common Room. I am there Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday I lead a practice discussion with students from three grades. When I came there, the students were paying attention to everything but the discussion; now, they seem much more animated to learn.

I have encountered the same basic argument every step of the way here: It would be nice to do more, but we can't. We can't have more than three hours of school. We can't hold students after school, even if they are in sixth grade and don't know their multiplication tables. We don't have money to fix the chalkboards. The students can't learn how to use the computers because the parents complain that certain students are being treated with preference. I have seen children being written off as having "learning disorders" who can understand and reproduce basic grade-level ideas perfectly well. I have been called a "tourist" instead of a volunteer by the regional director of the Ministry of Public education. And honestly, I am infuriated. I am infuriated because I see that these children are being robbed of their future, and nobody seems very much disposed to doing anything about it.

I have talked with the owners of Finca La Anita about this and they say that they struggled for a long time with the bureaucracy here before finally deciding to send their children to school in Liberia, 2 hours away. I can see why. I don't know that I have all of the solutions to the problems here, except I must admit that I am constantly forced to acknowledge how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to attend and work in schools with much better infrastructure and with much greater focus on high achievement for all students. Every day here, I have no choice but to look at myself as privileged; privileged economically and privileged in terms of education. Privileged because I come from the United States. People here equate my abilities with my nationality; those of you who know anything about my political leanings must know how infuriating that is. But I can't deny it here. I can't deny that I had a better chance, and knowing that is precisely what keeps me here. Because if my beliefs in solidarity and egalitarianism mean anything at all, it is that I have an obligation to stay here and share what I know with the students and those who are in charge of their futures.

At least we have internet now; I will be able to download some resources for the students and I will try to post again soon. When I get around a better connection I'll try to put some pictures up too! The valiant students who are braving these rough seas deserve to be known. :)

From Colonia Libertad,

Chaim Eliyah

3 de mayo de 2010

They don't teach campesino Spanish in college

So I continue settling in here. I haven't traveled further than the nearest town in several weeks now. I am working at two high schools, an elementary school and doing a number of private classes as well. The locals are beginning to recognize me. They still snicker because I don't understand the local speech. This is a subject that brings out the language fascist in me; can't we all just use established norms of communication with one another? Of course, the answer is no, unless you're a fan of strict hegemony and/or academic elitism (which I'm not). So, I've been doing my best to learn a new dialect.

So, last week I had internet through my iPhone and then the iPhone encountered a mysterious "error" and wouldn't boot. To restore it, I had to (according to Apple) upgrade to a new software package, and that software package destroyed my ability to use my phone in Costa Rica. C'est la vie. I'm working on another method of getting internet out to the boonies, but I'm only in the planning stages. Basically it involves a 3G USB modem. And when I get it set up, I am going to use my iPhone to make all the Skype calls I can just to spite Apple and AT&T.

Let's see. So it was the 26th that my phone broke. That was about the same day I got over the cold that my new friend Frenzel gave me. On the 28th there was a big to-do at the school and I was part of the entertainment. I got to play guitar for about 30 visitors from the Ministry of Public Education. They asked for an encore. It was pretty sweet. Everyone in Colonia Libertad is pretty intrigued by my guitar playing. People listen to me play for hours on end. This is because they don't mind country music. In Seattle I'm usually seen as a good guitar player but I seldom play for people for hours and hours because most of the songs I know are country songs. This is a little known fact about me that has now been published. What's to become of my reputation? Maybe I can apply for amnesty in Nashville?

Nobody showed up for the high school/adult evening English classes last week. There is this attitude in the community that has been explained to me as "if someone's neighbors don't do something (like get up in the morning) then they probably won't either." This sort of lack of individual initiative has proven to be a barrier to organizing a coherent schedule for English classes. With the kids, for example, I was going to teach English to them on Thursdays and Fridays so that I could free up the rest of the week for providing help where it's most needed (to the high-schoolers). But, I saw pretty quickly that Thursday and Friday are considered goof-off days and that the majority of the kids are allowed to leave by 11 a.m. or so. I have had a number of talks with community members about the importance of taking advantage of the free English classes.

Yeah, I know. Learning English should not be a prerequisite to survival in a globalized economy. In fact, people shouldn't have to depend on a globalized economy for their survival. What's more, subsistence farmers don't need some gringo to come and tell then about rugged individualism and the values of anglo society. OK. While I am a proponent of these concepts, I have to admit that this trip is definitely testing the strength of my conviction. Yes, Colonia Libertad is full of subsistence farmers. Yes, if all 8 of the bridges leading to their homes broke tomorrow and were never fixed, they would be able to survive just fine. But Colonia Libertad has a major problem, and that is that the non-campesino world is coming to them via satellite and cable, and they are often more interested in that world than they are in their own world. This is a situation similar to that of the Shuar youth who I met and talked with on my visits to Ecuador. The youth here are very interested in the Honda Evo 6, they are very interested in SUVs, they are very interested in PlayStation and Wii and portable computers, they are very interested in American rock & roll and hip hop (especially of the gangster rap variety), and they are not very interested in subsistence farming.

The kids here are playing Metallica and Guns N' Roses on their guitars just like I did a decade ago in high school. They are wearing American clothes. Their parents pay a high price for this, a price that I would venture to say they can't really afford ("afford" in capitalist, protestant-ethic terms). This is an interesting representation of identity given that these same teenagers live in shacks. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with living in a shack, but the aspirations of these young people exceed their means, and at some point I feel like they are going to become very disappointed with their lot and disillusioned with life in general if they cannot find a way to procure the things that they want for themselves.

I know. It's just as well that they become disillusioned with the capitalist system, because that disillusionment will fuel the fire of the multitude and eventually the multitude will band together and create another more equitable empire. And that's pretty easy for me to say coming from a privileged perspective. I make the choice to not have a steady income. I make the choice to be a neo-hippie. I make the choice to be a Marxist. And yet here I am in a motel room that most of my students' families can't afford writing a blog (what's a blog?) on my MacBook (what's a MacBook?) and what hits me more than just the injustice of the situation is the hypocrisy of the Marxist perspective in certain situations.

What I mean is, the majority of the kids I am teaching are perfectly capable of becoming university associates. They are perfectly capable of finding the kinds of jobs here that will allow them to fulfill their material desires. Not all of those jobs require English (some do), but they all require a willingness to conform to the work ethic. We can debate that notion until we're blue in the face; I happen to hate the term "work ethic" because it pertains to a set of ideas that tend to imply that "someone" can make a millionaire out of themselves no matter what class they were born into. This is a sociological falsehood, even if it remains a remote economic possibility. Nevertheless, it seems shameful to deny someone the choice between becoming part of the capitalist rat-race (if that's what they really want) or becoming an individual force of anti-capitalism (if, by their own initiative, they decide that capitalism must end) or, as I do, taking from capitalism only the things that they want while helping to organize communities so that they can demand a greater measure of social justice.

This is not meant to be an apologia pro insignare angleis. It's meant to be a rambling discussion that brings the socioeconomic and educational situation of people who are considered "marginal" or "peripheral" by "first world" economic fascists to the center. These are ideas that I will most likely be struggling with for the remainder of my stay here. Anyone who reads this is welcome to chime in.



Che Gringo

In other news, once I was pretty sure I would be able to sell it and recoup some of my loss at the end of my stay, I went ahead and bought a motorcycle so that I could fulfill my teaching appointments without having to depend on the bus and getting stuck overnight. Of course, it's only sensible to use the motorcycle when it's not raining, which provides another set of challenges, but I am much more mobile now.

The motorcycle is an off-brand "que ni se sabe" (that nobody knows) called ChanLin. It has a Suzuki drivetrain, 125cc. The day I bought it was definitely one of the best days of my life. Riding my new motorcycle was liberating, to say the least. It only took me an hour to learn, and when I was riding back home on the dirt road at 40 km/h with the sun shining and the wind in my hair, with the silhouettes of the mountains around me, I felt unstoppable.

Of course, the next day I found out that motorcycles are anything but unstoppable. My chain broke on a rock and I had to push the darn thing to a local handyman to get help. But since then I have been tearing up the local highway. I can't go very far yet because I don't have the plates and registration stickers. But I do plan to post some pictures of my adventures with it.

I might even be able now to haul out some of the plastic that will otherwise be burned. We'll have to save the discussion on the environment of Colonia Libertad for another time. I gotta go teach!

From Guayabo,

Chaim

22 de abril de 2010

Missing in Action

Hey people, sorry for being out of touch. The adventures continue. So far in the last 10 days I have managed to narrowly dodge disaster a number of times. I never did manage to explain my rant from 13 April, but don't worry, I'm working on a version of it that doesn't need additional explanation for the May issue of Ruckus newspaper. I'm also working on an anti-anti-panhandling rant, but I don't know if I should ask Ruckus to publish two rants at once. Does anyone know someone from Eat the State?

So I am presently hanging out in Colonia Libertad, staring wistfully at the gorgeous volcanoes that surround us here and drowning in a pool of sweat. Yes, I know, that's gross. It's terribly gross to go through, too. Today, for example, I went through three shirts. I am getting more accustomed to the environment, though; now, when mosquitoes bite, my bites don't swell up and excruciate me. Of course, I have been using a fair amount of cortisone and DEET. Yes, I know, chemicals are awful, but I have discovered that I am not above using them in certain situations. Of course, finding the construction materials to repair this house adequately would be a much better option, but I honestly wouldn't even know where to start. Probably with the failing concrete on the southern wall and the broken windowpane in my room.

People keep asking if I'm going to have a girlfriend while I'm here. This is a typical tico conversation topic. Even the people who have long-term partners and/or spouses often make jokes about who they want to be with. I am, of course, modest to a fault and so I'm holding out on them. But I'm going to have to learn the banter somehow. Flirting is part and parcel of this culture, and as long as it's just flirting, it doesn't seem like anything's off limits. People accept that risqué comments are fair play, giving rise to the expression "él que se enoja, pierde"--the one who gets angry loses.

The community is a little shocked by my agnosticism. Yes, there it is in writing, my agnosticism. It's hard for them to understand how I can be so doubtful and yet know so much about religion. I don't blame them, I've been wrestling with the same question for years. Nobody seems to mind, though. It's actually nice because it reminds me of the days when agnosticism would have shocked me. It was hard for me to imagine a world without a god when my world was still relatively small. As I began to fill my head with various philisophies and scientific observations, the concept of divinity seemed ever further out of reach. I suppose that from a biblical perspective, this could represent a form of idol worship, whereas from a secular perspective it might tend to reinforce the concept that spiritual beliefs are a replacement for empirical knowledge. Of course, traditional ecological knowledge usually manifests in spiritual form even though it embodies the real-world experiments of multiple generations. Maybe this means that Nietzsche was right, and that religious beliefs are reserved for the masses, while exceptional people must make and follow their own code. But what if those who think they can make their own code suffer the same fate as Raskolnikov did in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment? I digress.

The first few weeks here have definitely been somewhat Augustinian, but thank the Lord, I've survived. I have a great relationship with the children and teenagers in town. Most of the adults are pretty nice too, but a lot of them seem skeptical. I don't blame them. I have definitely come to appreciate a lot of things about my gringo lifestyle since coming here. Just as the rainforest of Ecuador taught me that I am not a shaman, living here in the country has definitely shown me what a city boy I am. Aside from this house (in which the refrigerator is snoring and the toilet is whispering), I have missed being able to feed my constant addiction to high-speed technologies and I have missed having more than just Snickers bars to choose from in the junk food section of the store. I miss my cars. I know, it's terrible, but I do. I feel like I don't have much freedom of movement here, even though I have been taking day trips all over the countryside. I miss fans. As soon as I find a good fan, I am going to chant nam myoho renge kyo ten times.

Most of all, I miss the people back home and our little everyday interactions. It's amazing how isolated you can feel after a few weeks of not having a drinking buddy, or an activist group, or some old friends, or just a bunch of rowdy pro-union folk to hang around. Of course, isolation can bring solace as well, and I have definitely had my fair share of thinking time lately. I've been playing a lot more guitar and reading much less than I expected. I've been spending a lot of time teaching. Today, for example, I started teaching at 8 in the morning and finally finished at 7 at night. Granted, there was a two and a half hour break in there, but that's still nine and a half hours of giving classes. There is definitely a need for me here, and that feels good. The smiles of the students are the only payment I require.

I'm off to bed--it's really late here, considering most people are up and around by 6--but I look forward to posting more soon. Hopefully I'll find a connection where I can upload some pictures. My posts should get more detailed now that I am moving more quickly through the transitional period and becoming more in tune with my surroundings.

From Colonia Libertad,

Chaim S. Eliyah